Social Boycott Can Persuade People to Resist Taxes

A tax resistance campaign can increase participation by means of a social
boycott practiced against non-resisting by-standers. Here are some examples
of social boycotts of this sort:

Vallabhbhai Patel, commander of the Bardoli tax strike

Social boycott was an important tool of the Bardoli tax refusal campaign
during the independence struggle in India. Mahadev Desai, in
The Story of Bardoli, writes:

It is this weapon that exasperated the Government, but they were
helpless because social boycott was no offence under the Penal Code. And
the Sardar [Vallabhbhai Patel, who commanded the campaign] poured
ridicule on Government for grudging the people the use of this their
only weapon. “What do you do yourselves? Yours is a close corporation
maintained by force of arms and its motive is no nobler than keeping a
nation in bondage. We resort to this weapon simply for the sake of
self-defence and self-preservation.” But he never omitted to emphasize
its limitations, the very first being that in no circumstances should a
Satyagrahi refuse to minister to the physical needs of the party
boycotted. “Eschew by all means molestation or oppression. We may not
refuse anyone milk, water, foodstuffs, help in case of illness or worse.
We cannot afford to prosecute boycott at the expense of our humanity.”

Among the ways they could boycott landowners who capitulated to
the government and paid their property taxes was to refuse to rent their
fields or to work as agricultural laborers for them.

During the American revolution, boycotts of British imports were enforced
by social boycott. One resolution of boycotters read in part:

[W]e further promise and engage, that we will not purchase any goods of
any persons who, preferring their own interest to that of the public,
shall import merchandise from Great Britain, until a general importation
takes place; or of any trader who purchases his goods of such importer:
and that we will hold no intercourse, or connection, or correspondence,
with any person who shall purchase goods of such importer, or retailer;
and we will hold him dishonored, an enemy to the liberties of his
country, and infamous, who shall break this agreement.

another said:

That whoever shall directly or indirectly countenance this attempt, or
in any wise aid or abet in unloading receiving or vending the Tea sent
or to be sent out by the East India Company while it remains subject to
the payment of a duty here is an Enemy to America — … That a Committee
be immediately chosen to wait on those Gentlemen, who it is reported are
appointed by the East India Company to receive and sell said Tea, and to
request them from a regard to their own characters and the peace and
good order of this Town and Province immediately to resign their
appointment.

An Ipswich town meeting resolved:

[W]e will not by ourselves or any for or under us directly or indirectly
purchase any goods of the persons who have imported or continue to
import, or any person or trader who shall purchase any goods of said
importer contrary to the agreement of the merchants in Boston and the
other trading towns in this government & the neighboring colonies
until they make a public retraction or a general importation takes place.

Sicily’s branch of the “Confindustria” industrialists’ union unanimously
voted in 2007 to expel any member who was
caught paying protection money to the mafia, and a few dozen members in
fact were expelled from the group under this policy.

Many Quaker “meetings” (congregations) had a policy of “disowning” members
who failed to practice war tax resistance. Sometimes, even failing to
report that the government had subjected you to “sufferings” for your
resistance could make you suspect, and Quakers would be appointed to visit
you and ask how you had managed to avoid government reprisals while
maintaining your refusal to pay. Disowning was something akin to
excommunication, and had the effect of removing the benefits of meeting
membership from the disobedient Quakers until such time as they repented
and made satisfactory amends — which might include reading an
acknowledgment of the wrong of their behavior at a future meeting.
Occasionally, as during the American Revolution, disownings like this
would lead to schisms and the emergence of rival meetings.

During the Tithe War in Ireland, it was reported that

Immense meetings are held, which form themselves into tribunals, before
which persons accused of the crime of tithe-paying are summoned to
appear, and give an account of their conduct; and defaulters undergo the
punishment of being abandoned at once by every person in their
employment. Country gentlemen and farmers are left without a servant or
labourer to perform the most necessary work. The hay is left to rot on
the ground, and the cattle to perish for want of the necessary food,
drink, and care; and even on the roads it is common for the horses of
the mails and stage-coaches to be changed by the coachmen and
passengers, because the unhappy recusant innkeeper has been deserted by
every one, even to his hostler. Such is the terror of this new species
of judicial authority, that numbers of highly respectable persons have
found it necessary, in order to avert ruinous consequences, to appear
before these self-constituted courts, acknowledge their jurisdiction,
and promise to give obedience to their decrees!

Another report complained: “The man who in any way upholds the obnoxious
system, whatever his previous character or services may have been, is
branded as an object of universal execration.”

When resisters at the “New Rush” in South Africa in
1874 pledged to refuse to pay further taxes,
they also pledged, “that I shall buy from, sell to, or deal with only such
men as have also taken this pledge or obligation.”

Women in Pennsylvania who found themselves suddenly taxable in the wake
of women’s suffrage were subject to strong social pressure to join in
a largely unorganized but widespread tax boycott. According to one report:

[A] woman, who is reported to have failed to pay her tax, asserted she
was laughed at by her friends when she paid her tax in former years, and
she would not be laughed at any longer.

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